Synopsis

Outside a Los Angeles sandwich shop, a young street dancer performs with carefree energy while an older man repeats the same routine years later. The two figures are revealed to be the same person at different stages of life. The older man returns once a year, dancing from sunrise to sunset in the hope that a lost girlfriend will come back. As spectators watch and speculate about his past, a brief glimpse of her younger self gives the bittersweet story an ambiguous emotional resolution.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed outside Chroni's Famous Sandwich Shop in East Los Angeles, California.

• Garland Spencer plays the younger version of the dancer, while Byron McIntyre portrays him as an older man.

• The two dancers are visually connected by their orange high-top sneakers. The younger man's pair appears new, while the older man's shoes are worn and repaired with tape.

• The routine combines popping, locking, robotic movement and breakdancing, making the choreography the video's central storytelling device rather than using a conventional band-performance format.

• There are two principal versions of the video. The original places the members of Dirty Vegas inside the restaurant, watching the dancer. A later version replaces those scenes with the band sitting in a silver Mitsubishi Eclipse at a nearby traffic light.

• The Mitsubishi footage was added after the song was licensed for the company's 2003 Eclipse advertising campaign. The commercial helped turn the previously modestly known track into a major US hit.

• "Days Go By" reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording. The video was also nominated for Best Music Video at the same ceremony.

• The song's association with the Eclipse commercial became so strong that many viewers first encountered "Days Go By" through the advertisement rather than through the music video.